Nightmare Child
by Gregoron
Summary: The night Voldemort got defeated didn't quite happen the way everyone thinks it did. And Harry Potter is not exactly the boy people think he is either.
1. You're a wizard Harry

Unnecessary disclaimer:  
Like basically every fanfiction out there this story is AU.  
And like every fanfiction author I do not own Harry Potter or any related characters, I hope to do this disclaimer once will be enough and I won't have to repeat it at the start of every Chapter.  
ANs will be at the end of chapters unless they have to be used as disclaimers of some sort.

 **Nightmare Child**

October 1985

Harry was a relatively healthy five year old boy. The only problem, he was dying.  
He lived with his aunt Petunia and uncle Vernon who had raised him since his parents had died when he was only one year old. They were not the friendliest of people, but they loved each other, and they loved the two boys they were raising. But it was this love that was killing him. Constantly being showered with love did nothing but starve him. The lack of negative emotions was killing something inside him, and he needed it to survive. To be fair, it was not like they did not have any negative emotions, but most of them came from things at his uncles work place or other such places and his uncle tried his best not to bring those things back home with him.

On the night of Halloween Harry had a very weird dream.  
One in which he argued with himself.  
And finally after he agreed with this other him, he woke up crying.  
His mother had wanted him to be alive. And that is what he intended to stay, whatever the cost.

* * *

July 24, 1991

Harry was frying bacon when the mail arrived.  
"Dudley can you go get the mail, my dear" said Mrs. Dursley with her sweetest voice, but Dudley was having none of it. "Make Harry do it", he said in a whiny voice while looking at his father.  
"Yes you do it, boy", Mr. Dursley said with a dirty look at his nephew.  
Harry took a look at the bacon, gave a small sigh and then shrugged. He put the bacon on a plate and went to collect the mail. He picked up the letters and made his way back looking through them. There were some bills, a letter from uncle Vernon's sister Marge and for some reason a letter with a red wax crest on it.  
Even more strange, the letter was addressed to Harry Potter Privet Drive 4 the cupboard under the stairs. The fact that it even said where he slept worried him slightly but in the end, it mattered little.  
He thought about throwing the letter through the slits of his door before entering the kitchens but decided against it.

What followed was a weirdly amusing scene in which Mr. and Mrs. Dursley looked worried because Harry had gotten a letter from something called Hogwarts or something like that. Dudley was shocked that Harry got a letter at all, no matter how odd. After a few moments Mr. Dursleys expression changed from worry to anger and the to smugness as he ripped the letter apart.

After Mr. Dursley had destroyed the letter he grabbed Harry shoved him into his room and locked the door.

Harry just sat there in the dark.  
The lightbulb in his room actually worked even if his aunt and uncle believed otherwise, but Harry rarely if ever turned it on.  
After almost two minutes he suddenly began blinking rapidly and shook his head a few times.

"Was that what I think it was?", he asked himself quietly. " **I think so** ", he said after a moment.  
"But what do we do now?" " **I'm not sure. We could just wait and see what happens. If we don't reply, they might send someone.** "

He was silent for a moment.

"We should still try to get our **hands on one of these letters.** "

* * *

Over the next days there came more and more letters, but his uncle managed to destroy them before Harry had a chance to steal one, but when Sunday came everything changed.

His uncle was just boasting about how Sundays were his favourite days of the week because there was no mail on Sundays when all of the sudden the whole room exploded with letters.  
They were everywhere.

He knew he would not be allowed to keep any letter he might be able to grab so he pretended to be an idiot, trying to catch one of the letters that were falling down while kicking as many of the fallen letters as he could into the hallway hoping that one of them would slip under his door. When he finally caught one and his uncle pushed him into his room he managed to kick a letter under a short table in the hallway so that if his first plan had failed he could grab that one later.

He needn't have bothered for he had three letters in his room and after hiding one of them let himself get caught with one of the other ones. After a quick search of his room produced a second letter from underneath his pillow his uncle was sure he had once again outsmarted his nephew.

To make sure they escaped this letter madness his uncle made all of them relocate to some deserted island and got a gun from somewhere.

* * *

Later that night while Harry was still thinking about whether or not to open the letter, because as he noted " **maybe they only keep sending them because they have a way of knowing that the ones that they sent were not opened** ", the door boomed with an ear-splitting sound. And then there was a man inside the room that looked like he could eat Vernon Dursley alive and still have room for desert. He had to keep his head down, so he would not hit his head on the ceiling and how he got through the door was something Harry did not understand.

After a short moment Uncle Vernon made an appearance form upstairs, his gun in hand and screaming his lungs out. "Get out off this house or I'll shoot you".

Instead of backing away the man took a step towards Vernon and just graped the gun, but before he could take it from Vernon there was a loud booming and smoke came out of the gun still pointed at the giant man.

"Tha' hurt you big muggle. No' giv' tha' here before someone gets hurt", the giant man said.

"I'm here ter give Harry Potter his Hogwarts letter, tha's all."  
With that he turned towards Dudley have started fumbling the inside of what looked like a moleskin coat made of at least a few hundred animals.  
"You're a little heavier than what I had expected but who am I ter juge, ehh?"  
"Excuse me but I am Harry."

"Heh, ohh didn't see yer there. Guess that makes sense, yer look a lot more like James than that whale over there", the man answered.

A while later Harry was on his way with Hagrid the gentle giant towards some place called the Leakey cauldron, which in Harrys opinion sounded way too cliché too be a real place, but then again, he knew next to nothing about what it meant to be a wizard.

* * *

From the Leakey cauldron they went to diagon ally by hitting some bricks on a wall with an umbrella. They first visited some big white building that was called Gringotts that was apparently the wizarding bank. Harrys parents had left him with a big mountain of gold and silver coins, some of which Harry converted into muggle money while Hagrid got something out of another vault. They visited all sorts of shops to buy his school supplies. As Harry got his robes there was another boy getting his robes done. He was not to nice and said some things about muggleborns that obviously displeased the woman working on his robes and when Harry told Hagrid about it later, he told him that it was rubbish and that witches and wizards from muggle families were just as good as those with what he called pure blood.

Hagrid got Harry a beautiful snow owl when he noticed that it was Harrys birthday and he hadn't gotten him a gift yet. After that the only thing Harry was missing was a wand.

Getting his wand took ages, but when he finally got it the feeling was amazing. When he grabbed the holly wand it was like a surge of power flooding his body. The wand sprayed red and white sparks. Hagrid applauded and Mr. Ollivanders said "good good, very good… how strange… very strange…".  
"Excuse me", Harry said. "But what is strange?"  
Mr. Ollivander gave him a look.  
"I remember every wand I ever sold, Mr. Potter. Every last one of them. It so happens that the phoenix whose tail feather is in your wand, gave another feather – just one other. It is very curious that you should be destined for this wand when it's brother is the one that killed your parents."  
Harry paled slightly at that.  
"Yes, thirteen-and-a-half inches. Yew. It is strange how these things happen. The wand chooses the wizard remember that… I think we can expect great things from you, Mr. Potter … In the end he-who-must-not-be-named did great things – terrible things, yes but great."

* * *

When Harry was back home the Dursleys were already back and tried to pretend that Harry didn't exist. He tried to get all his things into his room but then decided just to leave most of it in front of his door. Hagrid had given him a letter with his ticket to Hogwarts and said that should be on the train station on the first of September, which meant that he still had to wait a whole month.

At first, he spend most his time reading his school books in his room, but while his lightbulb worked it was not a great place to read and sitting somewhere else in the house was not something he would consider.

After a few days he decided to use some of the money he had converted to get to the Leaky Cauldron.  
He tried to get through the wall, but could not remember the correct bricks to poke with his wand. After a long moment's hesitation, he got back into the Leaky and asked the barman Tom to help him. A few minutes later he went into Flourish and Blotts to see if there were any helpful books about the wizarding world, or if not, were he could sit down to read the book he had taken with him. He was reasonably sure that the Dursleys would leave the rest of his stuff alone because they probably were still intimidated by their meeting with Hagrid.

He found a couple of books he was interested in and started reading, when a family of redheads entered the store. There were so many of them that it felt like the store was full of people all the sudden. He did not like crowds even if that crowd consisted of only 5 children and their mother, so he stopped reading and instead started watching them warily.

When three of the children immediately ran into the depths of the store as their mother was not looking for a moment with another one following them shouting not to run, said mother was just shaking her head with amusement before looking back at her daughter and continued arguing about something.

A moment later the daughter stormed away towards a comfortable reading chair and slumped down into it. She started muttering about something, probably how unfair the world was from the tone of it but then she noticed Harry blushed and was silent.

"No need to stop complaining just for me", he offered with one of the best fake smiles he had ever managed.  
"I was not complaining", she snapped back before putting one hand over her mouth.  
"Soo, what was it you weren't complaining about then", he asked with some amusement after a few seconds of uncomfortable silence.  
She rolled her eyes at him before answering.  
"Well you see all my brothers are going to Hogwarts this year and so it will be very boring at home. While I understand that I can't just go with them I thought that maybe I could get some of my school books early so I'd have something to do, but mum says they are to expansive and that we don't even know if I will need the same books next year, which is nonsense because almost all the books for the first year are always the same."

"So, is the money the problem, or does your mom just hate the idea about wasting money for no reason?" Harry asked.

She blushed at this.

"So, it is the money", he concluded with a frown.  
"Yes, but my mom would never take any money from charity or something like that", she answered in a squeaky voice.  
He frowned and then got up from the chair.

He walked through the store until he found a table with second hand books.  
He looked through them and bought a few.  
Then he got some paper and labelled them free before he walked over to the red haired woman who was currently trying to find her sons.

"Excuse me", he said while approaching her.  
"Yes, my dear, do you need help or something", she asked with a friendly smile.  
"No, I mean, I overheard you saying something about books for first years being to expensive and I saw some old ones being given away for free back there and thought you might want to know about that."  
The woman was visibly struggling with herself but then went to the table with him and called for her daughter, whose name was apparently Ginny.

When Ginny got there, she looked confused from her mum to Harry and back.  
"You seem to have luck because this young man here found some free books and some of them are those you wanted", her mother told her with a big smile.  
Ginny looked frightened to Harry before thanking him and taking them.  
"Where are my manners", said the woman while looking at Harry. "I'm Molly Weasley and this is my daughter Ginevra", she said with a smile.  
"Nice to meet you, I'm Harry", he answered.

When he went back to his reading chair Ginny followed him.  
"I told you that we didn't want charity", she said accusingly.  
"First of all, you said you mum didn't want that and secondly those books were free", he answered without looking up from his books.  
"Sure the exact books I wanted just happened to be free", she said with a voice that was dripping sarcasm.  
"I know how it is to be poor, so I can relate, but since you can't or in the very least won't prove that these books weren't free you can stop accusing me", he answered finally looking up from his book.  
There was a long silence between them.  
"I'm Ginny by the way."  
"So I've heard, nice to meet you Ginny, I'm Harry."  
"Are you ten as well", she ask after some hesitation.  
"No I'm eleven, why are you asking", he answered a little startled.  
"Oh, you don't look like eleven", she answered before blushing ones again.  
At that moment her mum came over with Ginny's brothers and told her that they needed to leave to get some more school supplies and Ginny went with them after saying goodbye to Harry.

* * *

The rest of the month was very boring because he decided that wasting the money his parents had left him with by going to the Leaky by train everyday was not something he wanted to do.

* * *

AN

* * *

Like every fanfiction this story will be AU, I intend to change a lot of things, including how magic works (not that JKR gave us many restrictions when it comes to that).  
While the plot of the first year will be relatively close to canon I don't intend to cling to it in later years, I may keep stuff I like and I may leave it out if I see fit.  
I´m also currently thinking about placing the story ten years later, because since I was not yet born in 1991 it feels weird writing about such a time.

* * *

While the first year is neither filled with much swearing nor with anything I would call inappropriate for teens (yet) I expect the story to take quite a few dark turns that may even require me to use some other website, because M is the highest rating allowed on this site. In such a case I would start a chapter with an AN that would provide a link to the uncensored version of the chapter.

* * *

This story is not supposed to be about romance, but it will probably contain romantic elements later. If you choose to see a romantic context in scenes of the first two or three years that is of course up to you, but please remember that we are talking about little children here.  
If you have any OTP you are free to tell me about it, but if you think you can make me see stuff the way you do, you better have a few very compelling arguments to back it up.

* * *

Since my native language isn't English feel free to blame my beta (sarcasm) for any typo you find (don't do so, we are all just human and it's probably my fault anyway). If you do find typos or anything alike feel free to tell me, but if possible provide the sentence surrounding the error, so I can find and fix it.

* * *

While you are free to ask about anything you want to have explained I will reserve the right to not answer if I think it would spoil the later plot or if I just don't want to answer. Also, I don't plan to answer questions in ANs so if you ask a question without giving me a way to answer it you won't get an answer. (PM or email preferably)

* * *

I first got the idea for this story when I was re-reading Harry Potter and the Prince of Slytherin by the Sinister Man. To be exact I got the idea when I was reading through the spells listed to be contained in the Anathema Codex and was imagining what they would or could do. I don't consider this stealing the idea, because so far it was not shown what those spells can do, with the exception of the Horcrux spell and Imago Dei of course. I will not try to simulate the Prince of Slytherin story, while I may use some ideas explored in that story those cases will not be intentional. At this point coming up with your totally original story is virtually impossible because the probability that no other fanfiction author has ever explored an idea that is at least vaguely familiar to one of yours is more than slim.

* * *

One last thing, if you see anything that sounds like it is very close to something that was said in one of the original books, keep in mind that while I could change each and every thing ever said in Harry Potter sometimes that just does not add anything to the story. I so far came across two scenes that would not be effected by the changes I did and so I mostly kept those the way they were. The first one is in this very chapter. Changing the entire conversation between Ollivander and Harry would have been a thing I could have done, but doing so would not have improved the story, instead I changed a few details and otherwise left it as is. Also keep in mind that I did not read those books in there original language and have by this point read more fanfiction about Harry Potter then I have read Harry Potter. If I ever happen to use a line from another fanfiction it will either be by accident or it will be noted in the AN of the story.


	2. Welcome to Hogwarts

**Welcome to Hogwarts**

* * *

Harry was quite annoyed at Hagrid for not mentioning how to get to platform 9 ¾ ticket while he stood around not knowing what to do.  
When he spotted the Weasley family he almost yelled of joy.

"Well, hello there Harry", Mrs. Weasley greeted him happily.  
"Hello ma'am, could you help me getting to platform 9 ¾?" He said.  
"No need for that ma'am nonsense my dear, I'll sure be happy to help you."  
With that the entire family continued on from platform 9 towards platform 10.  
After she introduced her family, or at least those who were present, for there apparently were even more kids, they reached platform 9 ¾.  
While the twins Fred and George who constantly made jokes about which of them was which helped getting Harrys stuff on board of the train he briefly talked to Ginny and promised her to send her a letter how Hogwarts was some time. He would have liked to continue talking to the Weasleys, but the train was just about to leave already so he went to search for a compartment that wasn't to full yet.

* * *

Hermione Granger was immersed in Hogwarts: A History and did not quite notice the person knocking on her door at first. As a consequence, she was startled when the door opened a little and there was a boys voice asking if there was any free space left in her compartment.  
She wasn't sure whether she wanted to let him in, because she was sure to get ridiculed about her books again but in the end she thought it would be petty and rude to send him away for such a reason.  
"Come in", she answered the question and was surprised when she saw a boy enter who looked more like he had just turned ten at best. He was scanty and slightly pale and had a few painful looking scars on his hands. His cloths looked like they were several sizes too big and were slightly torn.  
"Hi, my name is Harry", he said after putting away his stuff and sitting done.  
"Pleased to meet you, I'm Hermione, Hermione Granger."  
"What are you reading", he said after a moment of silence.  
At that she got a little exited and started telling him all about her books. She did realize that she was going a little overboard, but he had asked her so surly it was ok to tell him.  
She reigned herself in after about 5 minutes or so, because she noticed that she had been the only one talking for quite some time. Was she annoying him already and he was just tolerating her because he did not want to search for another compartment? She started panicking slightly but then she noticed him look at her curiously. She settled for a compromise.  
"So what are your favourite books?" She asked hopeful.  
"I'm not sure I have a favourite book yet. Maybe the potions book, because it reminds me of cooking." He answered but his was seemed slightly off.  
"You don't have to choose a school book. Did you read all the school books yet?"  
"Hmm, I only read two not school related books and those were on wizarding culture and I'm not yet done with those. For your other question, no I started reading all of them, but I did not get to far, yet."  
"Oh, why not. You read books about wizarding culture, does that mean you are muggleborn as well?"  
"Muggle raised to be more precise, my parents were both magical, but they died a long time ago and I was raised but my aunt and uncle who are muggles."  
"Sorry to hear that", she said but he just shrugged it off.  
He looked thoughtful for a moment before changing the subject.  
"Is there any useful information in Hogwarts: A history? Or is it just trivia that is nice to know?"  
The question surprised and exited her because she really wanted to continue talking about books instead of awkward social stuff.  
"Well, you see there is lots of trivia that might prove very useful. For example, did you know that the ceiling in the great hall is spelled to look like the night sky above?"  
"So there is a great hall, good to know." He answered.  
She wasn't sure whether or not he was mocking her or not but since he was listening with what she hoped was interest as long as the information she was providing was even slightly useful she was content to continue on, and on, and on.  
Before she knew it there was a knock on the door and a voice informing them that they would reach Hogwarts soon and that they should put on their robes if they had not yet done so.

* * *

When they left the train, it was already dark outside. The station looked relatively muggle which Hermione was disappointed about. From somewhere someone started shouting "Firs' years over here, firs' years over here." And it took her a moment to notice the mountain of a man. At first, she had mistaken the lamp he was holding for a low hanging streetlamp. They walked up to him and Harry surprised her, and most people around her, by casually greeting the man who was apparently called Hagrid. They followed him to the dark lake to take the boats as was Hogwarts tradition as explained in her favourite book.

The maximum amount of people in one boat was four and Harry knew that it would be hard for anyone to get a word in when riding a boat with Hermione, and while he had started to like her after almost six hours of riding a train together he thought it best to meet some more people before getting into Hogwarts. So, when it was time to choose boats he convinced Hermione that they'd need to mix with other people a little bit and they got in separate boats. He of course knew she did not particularly liked meeting new people because of her social awkwardness but he did not care to much. In the end he needn't have bothered for as soon as the boats started moving the weird feeling that had started when they set foot on Hogwarts grounds started intensifying so much that he ignored the people around him almost completely. It was a good thing everyone was just gawking at the impressive looking castle in front of them, because pretending to care about some boring chitchat would have been very hard for him at that moment.

It had started as a slight tickling on his chest. Then it became an itch that started spreading over his entire body. Finally, it went to being a burning feeling that almost had him in tears.

The feeling stopped when the boats reached the castle and he was glad that most people felt to intimidated by Hagrid to start talking, because he was not sure whether or not he'd be able to speak at that moment.

After they had reached the great hall and professor McGonagall had told them to wait, there was some kind of drama in which the kid from the robe shop insulted the youngest Weasley boy, his name was Ron if Harry remembered correctly. Shortly after that they entered the great hall of Hogwarts, which even though Hermione had told him everything about it still was an amazing sight, with flying candles filling the room and the charmed ceiling above. While Hermione had told him lots of stuff about the four houses their respective values and important historical figures, how the sorting worked was apparently some kind of secret and was thus not written down, even in the book that Hermione seemed to know by heart.

He had thought about the ways they could be tested for the house values and had some strategies on how to get into each respective house for most tests he was able to think up, so he was a bit sad to learn that all they would have to do was putting on some old magical Hat that sung terrible songs and they would be magically sorted. He was thinking about how he could influence what house he would get in, but knew to little about what the Hat did to come up with a way to trick it.

When Hermione was called he got surprised when she went to Gryffindor instead of Ravenclaw. Harry smiled at her while the next boy got sorted into Hufflepuff.

"Longbottom, Neville" Professor McGonagall called next and all the sudden the air was filled with whispers. Harry was intrigued because he had heard a lot about the Boy-who-lived from Hermione. He was said to be the one who defeated his parent'smurderer. While he wished this boy had done so one day earlier he still owed him for revenging his parents even if he likely not even remembered doing the deep.

It took longer than expected but in the end, it came to no ones surprise that Neville got sorted into Gryffindor, even if he was a lot clumsier then Harry had expected him to be. One would think that such a celebrity would be fine walking through a hall and putting a stupid Hat on his head, but who was he to judge.

There were seven more people before it was finally his turn to get sorted, including the rude robe shop boy Draco Malfoy who got sorted into Slytherin the moment the Hat touched his head.

When the professor called his name he walked up to the stool sat down and waited for the Hat to call out his name.  
Instead when the Hat was put on his head, he heard a voice.  
"There are not supposed to be two of you in here." It said in a slightly confused tone.  
"So it can look inside our head." He concluded.  
"You are correct on that, but be at piece, everything I learn while I am on your head will stay between you and me … and him, I guess." The Hat answered.  
" **so, I believe we are to be sorted** "  
"You are right, of course. And be assured I really won't tell anyone about your existence, even if I would like to do so."  
"We will believe you, for now. Could you please tell us our house now?" Harry was slowly getting impatient and the fact that this head was able to read his mind made him unusually nervous.  
" **and don't even think about calling out two different houses or we will set you on fire**."  
There was a sound that reminded him of gulping.  
"Ok, let's see, you could go into Hufflepuff, but your loyalty is so hard to earn that you would not really fit in. You are smart enough to go into Ravenclaw, but your interest in knowledge is of a pure pragmatistic nature. You are in an unusual control of most of your feelings which would qualify you as brave enough for Gryffindor I guess, but your reasoning for wanting to go there is the most Slytherin I have ever seen in the more than one thousand years I have been sorting children. While I want to shout out Slytherin and be done with it I am committed to sort in the best interest of the student I am sorting so I will give you the choice. You might be happiest in Hufflepuff. You may contribute most to mankind in Ravenclaw. You'll likely get the most powerful in Slytherin. And you may be safest in Gryffindor. But before you choose, please remember that I can not look into the future, so what will happen depends entirely on you and the choices you make."

About ten seconds later the Hat called out "Gryffindor" and almost everyone in the hall started clapping, even some on the Slytherin table, because it had taken the Hat about three and a half minutes to sort Harry and everyone was happy that the sorting would finally continue.

Harry went over to his house table and sat down between Hermione and one of the Weasley boys called Percy while the sorting finally continued. Hermione was obviously happy about his sorting and wanted to talk to him about something, but her love for rules apparently stopped her from talking while there were still people to be sorted, even though she was basically the only person in the hall following that rule.

After Ron Weasley and Blaise Zabini had been sorted into Gryffindor and Slytherin respectively, the sorting came finally to an end. And the headmaster Albus Dumbledore gave a little speech that consisted entirely of nonsense words, which may as well have been some magical spell for all Harry knew.  
He was quickly assured that the headmaster was some kind of crazy genius.

* * *

He turned to Hermione and raised one eyebrow.  
"I believe you wanted to ask me something" he finally said after some awkward silence.  
"Huh, oh, how did you know. Well, you see, I wanted to ask you what the Hat said to you."  
"I think that is a little to personal" he answered.  
He noticed how disappointed she looked at that, so he added a "so you might want to ask that question again when we are not in the same room as the entire school".  
At that her face lit up as she had probably thought that she had finally annoyed him enough that he would stop talking to her.

While he almost ignored her for the rest of dinner, she seemed hellbent on keeping the one friend she had made.

For Harry the rest of dinner was a weird experience. Some of the food tasted strange and the pumpkin juice everyone seemed to be so fond of was not exactly what he would have called tasty. He of course lost no word about that, getting enough food to be full was something he would never complain about even if he did not particularly liked the taste of some of it. There was plenty of well tasting food and no one forced him to eat anything he did not like.

Being surrounded by so many people was another thing he would need to get to terms with. While he tried to follow all the conversations around him and integrate himself into the house he found that Hermione's way of doing social things might be more to his taste, even if he would never consider behaving like her.

He noticed that one of the professors was staring daggers at him through most of the dinner but decided not to ask anyone what the professors name was.

The dinner ended with the Headmaster casually mentioning that "the forbidden forest was forbidden" and that some corridor was not to be entered unless one wished to die a horrible death. After that they had to sing the school song, which was less of a song and more of an abomination. Before being told to follow the prefects of their respective houses.

The Gryffindor common room was hidden behind the moving portrait of the Fat Lady.  
They were told to remember the password, which Harry thought was a pretty stupid thing to expect of eleven year olds. They were shown their dorms, one for the girls and one for the boys and Ron's brother Percy told them that there was some charm in place that forbid boys to enter the girl's dorm, which sounded a little sexist because he did not mention anything like that for the boys. One moment later Harry was hit with a realization that stopped him dead in his tracks. They would have to sleep in Dorms! This was both exciting and terrifying, for it would be the first time he slept in a real bed in a long time. But on the other hand, he would likely wake up everyone around him if he'd get a nightmare. While he had not woken up crying in a long time and his nightmares were not as frequent as they had once been, it still happened sometimes. When he got into his bed that night he was thankfully too tired to have dreams, but he put finding a solution to this problem onto a list that was getting quite long already.

* * *

AN

* * *

This chapter did not yet recive it's final check by my beta so it might be changed a little in the next few days, but I don't expect anything mayor to change.

One thing I think I forgot to say in the AN of the first chapters is that if you have any question on why something is the way it is, please ask me. While I may not answer your question if I think it would spoil any mayor plot point it is always good to have an explaination on why stuff is like it is. I have a file called "Why" in which I write down reasons for why something is like it is, even if it will not be relevant for the story in the near future or even ever, like for example why the money in the magical world works like it does and why no one trys to exploid trading gold and silver from the magical world and stuff like that.

23.04.2018 just found out that this chapter has not been updated to what it was supposed to be for like a month or so, even tho I had it ready and uploaded already. Reason: I'm still to dumb to operate this website correctly :(


	3. Lessons

**Lessons**

Harry loved Hogwarts, even if he hated stairs. There were one hundred and forty-two staircases and most of them charmed in one way or another. Some of them moved randomly, some moved depending on factors like the day of the week and some simply had fake steps that you had to memorize. But the stairs were not the only thing charmed in Hogwarts, with all those doors being walls and walls being door and other such nonsense it felt like you could hide everywhere if you just knew your surroundings better than the person searching for you.  
The only problem he had with this. He, and every other first year for that matter, never knew where to go. Prefect Percy was so nice to show them the way to the great hall on their second day in Hogwarts, but ever since they had to find their way on their own. They had been given their time tables at dinner the first day, and while the location of the rooms they were supposed to have classes in was on it, did this only little to help them find it.

The classes themselves were a little weird at first, because they had to learn the theory behind how magic worked first and were told that while children were able to do some minor magic called wish magic were you just wished very hard for what you wanted to happen, this sadly had little to do with how real spells worked. In transfiguration, which was taught by the Gryffindor head of house professor McGonagall, they were told that they would not even attempt to do any spells before they had proven that they understood the basics of what they were doing, because accidentally transfiguring something into a gas and inhaling it could be fatal even with a healer present because of how weak their magical cores were at the moment, which meant that it would most likely turn back into a solid before the Hogwarts mediwitch madam Pomfrey would do anything more than pulling out her wand.

Consequently, astronomy and herbology were the student' favourite subjects at first, because while looking at the stars and identifying plants were not very interesting things to do for your average eleven year old it was still better than writing down stuff the teacher wrote in the black board.  
While Defence against the dark arts should have been the most interesting subject, the fact that professor Quirrell was unable to more than five words without stuttering ruined this experience for all of them.  
History of magic was another one of those subjects that could have been great but was ruined by the teacher. While professor Quirrell was just weird and kept staring at Neville from time to time, professor Binns was straight up dead. A ghost teaching could have been exiting if he weren't so dull that most people fell asleep in their first class.

When Friday came around Harry was excited for their first potions class because he thought this might be the first class where they would finally be able to do something in class that would not be copying down text or looking at stuff. They would have a double potions class with the Slytherins and while he was told that professor Snape was famous for favouring the Slytherins he was determined to not let this ruin his mood. There was also the fact that this professor Snape was the one who was giving Harry a stink eye every time they locked eyes.

Professor Snape began his class like most of the teachers with reading the name list, but instead of pausing of Neville's name like a few of the other professors had done, he paused on Harry's, which struck the non-dense students as odd, but what surprised Hermione more than the professor's behaviour was how happy Harry seemed to be. He had mentioned that he was looking forward to potions because he liked cooking as long as no one was throwing a frying pan at him. That statement had been weird, but it also did not explain the reason why Harry was so visibly happy about the obvious dislike the professor was showing him. Then the professor began "You are here to learn the subtle science and exact art of potion-making," He spoke in barely more than a whisper, but they caught every word—like Professor McGonagall, Snape had the gift of keeping a class silent without effort. "As there is little foolish wand-waving here, many of you will hardly believe this is magic. I don't expect you will really understand the beauty of the softly simmering cauldron with its shimmering fumes, the delicate power of liquids that creep through human veins, bewitching the mind, ensnaring the senses... I can teach you how to bottle fame, brew glory, even stopper death—if you aren't as big a bunch of dunderheads as I usually have to teach."

More silence followed that little speech.  
"Potter!" said Snape suddenly. "What would I get if I added powdered root of asphodel to an infusion of wormwood?"  
Hermione's hand shot up like a rocket, she was eager to prove that she was not a dunderhead, even if she thought it was a little unfair to ask about a potion that was only mentioned in passing in the 6th chapter of the book.  
But when Harry answered that he did not know with a slightly frustrated voice, she was disappointed that the professor instead of giving the question to the class continued his onslaught of Harry.  
"Let's try again. Potter, where would you look if I told you to find me a bezoar?"  
Her hand rose a few more inches, when she noticed some slight recognition in Harry's eyes.  
"Isn't that some kind of stone that can cure poisoning?" Harry answered in an unsure voice.  
"Is that a question?" the professor asked in a slightly malicious voice. "And I asked you were to find it."

"One last try what is the difference, Potter, between monkshood and wolfsbane?"  
Hermione was almost ready to jump off her chair, because of how unfair this all was. That was not even in the potions book, but the herbology one instead, but before she could do anything Harry surprised her by answering.  
"Aren't they the same plant, sir?"  
"Again with this questioning. While you are correct for once you would do better to open your books next time. For your information, asphodel and wormwood make a sleeping potion so powerful it is known as the Draught of Living Death. A bezoar is a stone taken from the stomach of a goat and it will save you from most poisons, but not all. As for monkshood and wolfsbane, they are indeed the same plant, which also goes by the name of aconite. Well? Why aren't you all copying that down?"

The remainder of the class was spend making a very simple potion. Hermione still had to constantly tell Harry what Neville was doing wrong so he in turn could tell Ron who was working with Neville, who for some reason seamed hellbent on melting his cauldron for some reason.  
After about fifteen minutes the professor docked a point from Gryffindor because Harry had to stand up to help Neville and Ron. Later when Neville finally succeeded in melting his cauldron he docked another point because Harry did not help him.

When they left the classroom Hermione was seething, but what was worst was how happy Harry seemed to be.  
"Why are you so happy Harry" She finally asked with an exasperate sigh.  
"Huh, oh. Is potions not great?" he asked with a smile, that did nothing to placate Hermione at all.  
"Why would you like it, I get that you like cooking, but Snape hates you for some reason and Neville got hurt."  
"Well, I am sorry for Neville and the reason Professor Snape hates me is still a mystery to me, but except for those minor inconveniences it is by far my favourite subject yet."

When they arrived at dinner her worries got blown out of the water by the newspaper.  
Someone had successfully broken into Gringotts. She had been told by professor McGonagall herself that is was impossible to do so, and she felt betrayed by her professor's words being proven wrong so much she forgot to ask Harry why he was only upset about not knowing why professor Snape hated him but not about the fact that he hated him in the first place.

Sunday was a big day for the Gryffindor first years, because they had magical theory and would supposedly finally be able to start using spells after that. This class would be in a small room inside the restricted area of the library which was why every house had this class separately, the room was according to Fred and George locked the rest of the year and they had never been able to enter it again after their one class in first year.

The room was circular and the walls where covered in bookshelves.  
The books in them all had a greyish red cover that seemed to glow slightly, which gave the room an ominous look.  
Other than bookshelves there was only one table and one chair inside the room, but what surprised most of them was that professor McGonagall was sitting behind the table while the headmaster stood beside her. What surprised most of them about that was that they had been told that it would be professor Sprout and professor Dumbledore who would be in here, because they had only asked the Hufflepuff's who had been in here yesterday morning. Had they asked the Ravenclaw's who had been in here that same evening they may have realized that it was always the head of house who would assist the headmaster, but only one of them had bothered to do so.

"Welcome students" the headmaster greeted them with a benevolent smile on his lips.  
"As you may or may not have been told already you will get your spellbook today."  
"The spellbook is after your wand the second most important thing you will need to use magic efficiently, that is not to say that using spells without it are impossible, but they take a lot longer and are a lot harder to perform." He paused to let the meaning of his words sink in, before he continued.  
"The spellbook gives you a list of spells you can cast quickly and without having to concentrate to hard. How long that list of spells is depends on the witch and wizard who use the book. You will have the option to make your own spellbook in fifth grade, but until then you will get one from Hogwarts. For those of you who decide against making an own spellbook, who will be able to keep the one you will have used for the previous four years.  
While the books serve some other purposes as well, those only get important if the ministry is involved, so you may read up on the matter if you will, but I won't go into detail here."

After that the headmaster gave professor McGonagall a look which prompted her to stand up and moved towards the class. "I will call out your names in order and you will do as follows. You will walk in a circle around the room without touching any of the books, once you have done so you will go into the middle of the room and then go to towards a book. For what reasons you choose the book matters little, but it is likely that you will be able to feel the urge to pick one specific book. You will take the book out of the shelf without touching any of the other books, then you will take a step back open the book and tell us which of these symbols you see."  
With that she produced a list of symbols and put it on the table, before sitting down again.  
"If you feel a very urgent need to take a book, before you have completed your round feel free to take it immediately, but please be careful not to touch any of the other books while you do." Added the headmaster with another benevolent smile on his lips.

"Brown, Lavender." Professor McGonagall called, and the girl did as instructed.  
Once she touched the book it turned a slight blue. She went over to the list and said it was the second symbol and the professor wrote that down into a normal book in front of her.

While Seamus was starting his round, Hermione told Harry that the symbols reminded her of runes, that were somehow linked to numbers, but she knew only that the first three likely corresponded to the numbers zero to two in ascending order.

Hermione's book became the colour of parchment with a slight golden touch at corners.  
She told the professor that she had the forth symbol and Harry could see a slight smile on the professor's lips as she noted that down as well.

Neville should have been next, but the professor told him that he would go last, after all the others had left, so it was Harrys turn to make his way around the room.  
At this he panicked for a moment but got himself under control again just as fast.  
When he started walking he felt a very strange pull from across the room, but withstood the need to run straight towards it. When he had crossed half the distance he could no longer hold onto himself and rushed to the book, he could just barely hold himself from plunging towards the book and when he had finally touched the book he felt reminded of the moment when he had touched his wand for the first time. The book turned a fiery red with a green circle around a black dot in the middle, the dot was about one and a half inch in diameter and the green circle was another inch thick.  
He went over to the list and studied the symbols.  
"I have the forth one" he said with obvious relieve.

Once everyone but Neville was done Dumbledore told them not to go around telling or showing people which symbols they had, because it was considered a faux pas to do so, and that their symbols would likely change in the near future anyway.

After that they left, and Ron, Hermione and Harry waited for Neville to come out.  
After he did he told them that he had gotten the third symbol and was on par with Ron, because as he said, it was unfair that he had gotten to know theirs and they had not been told his.

* * *

AN

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Sorry that this took so long, I do have the first ten chapters ready, but I had a lot going on latly and I could give about a dozen reasons why this took so long, from me moving, to applying for a job, but to be honest it was mostly me being a lazy piece of shit. In addition this was a chapter I had to change a lot of times.

As anyone who read this chapter will have noticed I changed a bit how magic works. JKR's magic system is a very soft one (for anyone who knows Brandon Sandorson's view on the matter), which basically means that the reader has little knowlage about how magic works, what it's limitations are and what if anything it costs. While I don't plan to make it a hard magic system I will make it a lot harder that it was originally. The change I started to describe in this chapter will be outlined more clearly in a later chapter (which is already done and which I only need to review a couple more times until I think it will be good enough to publish).

I would like some opinions on the matter. The chapter were the magic system gets explained more detailed is chapter 8 in case anyone wants to know.

Lastly I hope this chapter was intriguing and I would be really happy about any reviews.


	4. Childish things

**Childish things**

AN: This chapter was not really checked to satisfaction yet, but I've kept delaying this for no reason for way too long so I will just upload it for now. It will probably see some changes later, also I finally have a picture for this story, made by a good friend of mine, you can find her here:  
Wattpad user/Ichbinnichtkreativ .( Noticed that ffnet deleted the link again :/ )

* * *

After that sunday the monday lessons were a huge let down. Herbology was the same as always, and they were told that most of the spells they were expected to learn for Herbology, would be taught in Charms and a few of them in DADA. While they used their wands in Transfiguration the only thing they did was try to change a matchstick into a needle. The only one who had any success was Hermione and all she did was make her matchstick a little silvery and pointy. Charms was even worse, because they still had to do the preparation for the levitation spell, because as professor Flitwick explained it was a very draining spell for first years and you needed to have a good understanding of how it worked, or you would get so exhausted that you might lose consciousness for a few minutes because of the over taxation on the magical core. What saved the day in the eyes of most first years from Gryffindor was a note on the Gryffindor black board that said that flying lessons were scheduled for Thursday the 12th of September, that was until they continued to read and noticed that they would have them with the Slytherins.

When the mail came the next day at breakfast Harry was talking with Seamus as a packed for Neville arrived that had a small glass ball inside which was filled with what looked like white smoke. Neville had just explained that it was called a Remembrall and was supposed to remind the holder when he had forgotten something important when Malfoy took the by now red ball right out of his hand.

"Look what we have here, the boy-who-lived has forgotten something important. Probably how he managed to defeat the Dark Lord when he was a baby." Malfoy gloated.  
"Would you just give Neville his ball thingy back" said Harry with an exasperated sigh.  
"What do you even want, Potter. You don´t even get mail, since no one wants anything to do with you."

Hermione noticed with some surprise that Harry seemed to wince a little at that statement, but it was hard to tell with him, because he usually looked like he didn´t care about the world around him unless he displayed emotions on a little exaggerated level. She was starting to suspect that he played his emotional responses most of the time.

Before the situation was able to escalate any further, professor McGonagall arrived, and Malfoy acted like he just wanted to look at Neville´s Remembrall and went back to the Slytherin table.

He tried to get his hands on the Remembrall again, when lunch came around and had another go at it the next breakfast as well, but Neville started watching for it more closely when he knew Malfoy was around.  
Wednesday evening was nice, because the Astronomy was cancelled so they could be up for the flying lessons the next day, which was something that seemed to offend professor Sinistra, especially since most students were supposed to take at least three Flying lessons over the next 2 months with those who show to be competent only needing two and those less gifted needing four or even five, which would cut into their Astronomy lessons.

While most people were excited for the Flying lessons Neville and Hermione were more horrified than anything else. Harry showed some slight unease as well, but Hermione was not sure whether it was genuine or if he was just reflecting what he picked up from her and Neville so to better fit in. After thinking about it she decided she was overthinking his behaviour again, he was trying to teach her how to read social cues, but had told her that overanalysing everything was more of a hindrance, because she took to long thinking about social cues instead of reacting to them and was most likely over interpreting most of them if she´d think about them to long anyway.

When Thursday came around Hermione was close to being an emotional wreck. She had practiced the levitation charm the entire Wednesday in hope she would be able to catch people, falling from their brooms with it, but had just realized at breakfast this morning that it would not help her if she was the one falling. She had also read every book she had found on flying tips at least three times, but she had only found two and one of them had not been helpful at all, because it mostly listed the error one could make, but said nothing about how to avoid those.

Their teacher, Madam Hooch, arrived. She had short, grey hair and yellow eyes like a hawk. While Hermione had perfect trust in their teacher´s abilities she was a little worried when she told them that they would all fly up simultaneously, because she had no idea how Madam Hooch would be able to stop accidents should more then one student fall at the same time, but she had also said that they would only fly up a few feet, so it was not like anyone was in any real danger anyway.

"When I tell you to, you will all hold out your hands like this and say UP. The broom will fly up to your Hand and you will grab it. I except you to wait until everyone has their brooms in hand and you received further instructions, before anyone does anything.

Everyone cried "Up" but most brooms only did a little bit of turning on the ground instead of jumping into the hands of their masters. Harry´s result was as average as you could get, but instead of showing any resignation or any other emotion he just stared off into space.

 _ **We don´t need to do this crap anymore**_ _.  
B-but.  
_ _ **We don´t need. To. Do. This. Anymore.  
**_ _But I don´t want to show off. Everyone will hate me. And I don´t want to ride this stupid broom anyway.  
_ _ **Don´t you trust me? Only the weak would hate you for such petty resons. And we don´t need those to like us. I have helped you to project some confidence and look where it has lead. We have more allies than we have ever had before. And you even have one of those friends that you always wanted.**_

He snapped back into reality and noticed with some unease that almost everyone was staring at him.  
"Are you ok, boy?" asked Madame Hooch in an almost gentle voice.  
"Ha, he's so ashamed he can't even speak." Shouted Malfoy somewhere from the back.  
Those who had still been watching Harry, when the laughter started, could have sworn that there had been something wrong with his left eye, but it was gone so fast that no one knew what it had been.  
"Up." Harry commanded in a cold voice and the broom shot up into his hand.  
The laughter died as quickly as it had started.

Once everyone had their brooms in hand Madame Hooch instructed them to form a line. As told before they would push off the ground, hover for a moment and then come back down again, but before her lips even touched the whistle Neville pushed of the ground as hard as he could and shot of like a rocket. Straight up he went. He was already about forty feet high in the air before he lost grip after looking down. He had almost hit the ground when Madame Hooch hit him with a spell that slowed him down. It still sounded like it hurt a lot and Madame Hooch brought him to the Hospital wing by levitating him there. Before she went she told them to stay put or they would be expelled.

"Look what we have here. The famous boy-who-fell-from-his-broom lost his stupid ball thingy." Malfoy said triumphantly.  
While Harry was still touching his face with the palm of his hand, Ron rose to the taunt and confronted Malfoy.

Ron was enraged, how dare he steal something from the-boy-who-was-Ron´s-friend.  
He had almost managed to grab Malfoy, but in the last second the coward took to the sky. He grabbed a broom himself when the god forsaken know-it-all told him to leave Malfoy alone. "What are you on about you, you…"  
"He isn´t worth it." She answered.  
That was it. He pushed her hard to the ground before going after Malfoy. In his rage he almost collided with the other boy mid-air. He grudgingly had to acknowledge that the boy had not been lying when he told everyone about how flying was second nature to him, but that would not stop him from taking Neville´s whatever it was called back.  
"I will push you off your broom, Malfoy." He shouted in hope that the other boy would be intimidated enough to land, but instead it was so much that the other boy felt cornered.  
"How about you try to catch this thing if it is so important." Malfoy answered before tossing the ball as far as he could.  
Without thinking Ron rushed after it, he was almost in free fall, but the ball was still just out of his reach, and the ground was getting closer and closer.  
Then the miracle happened. As if influenced by some outside force the ball seemed to slow down, no that was impossible, he was speeding up, yes that was it. His great ability on a broom was making him just that slight bit faster and he was able to grab the ball. But he hadn´t noticed how close he already was to the ground. He pulled up and was just barely able to avoid hitting the ground, which at this speed could have easily broken his bones.

He was holding the ball up in one hand like a trophy while on his way back and most of the Gryffindors were applauding him, even a few of the Slytherins looked impressed with his feat. He noticed that Harry was scowling at him, which made a shiver run down his spine for some reason. He had never seen the boy so angry before and was honestly confused what he was on about. Then he noticed Granger still lying on the ground where he had pushed her. She looked unconscious and his blood that had just been boiling with righteous rage got very cold very fast. Had he pushed her so hard that she was hurt. As he approached Harry grabbed her and started carrying her towards the hospital wing without even giving him another glance.

When Madame Hooch came back she announced that this lesson was cancelled, and they would repeat it next week.  
A few seconds after the bell rang his brothers appeared out of nowhere, grabbed him and told him he needed to meet someone.

A few hours later Draco Malfoy had the nerve to challenge him to a wizarding duel. He agreed and chose Seamus as his second, because Neville was still not released from the hospital wing.

When Harry met Hermione the next day at breakfast she told him a story that made his eyes bulge and had him hit his face with the palm of his hand at least half a dozen times.

* * *

AN

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Just read over this again, hate how many errors I found.

I have the first 10 chapters already finished, but if I only publish them once i am satisfied with them it will take for ever until they are out. If you want me to just upload them anyway, please tell me in a review or pm. I will also write a pm to everyone who was so nice to follow or fav this story asking what they would prefer. In the end I will go with the answer I get most often. In case no one cares I will just upload all of them.


	5. Making Friends

**Making Friends**

Lessons continued, and the first-year students were slowly getting the hang of it. In Transfiguration most people were able to change a matchstick into a needle after about two weeks of practice. Instead of moving to the next step they were tasked to turn a certain number of matchsticks each class, which professor McGonagall explained was because "Magic is in a way like a muscle, if it is used regularly it becomes stronger. Also like with a muscle you must build up your tolerance, or stamina if you will, to become able to hold spells for a longer amount of time. As you all know you are learning the levitation spell in charms right now. As far as I know there was so far only one of you presumptuous enough to think that it would be a good idea to just try that spell on their own. While the spell is not the most complex one that exists it still is a rather hard spell to master. And more importantly depending on the mass of the object you try to move and your distance to the object it is an exceptionally taxing spell that could easily knock you out within seconds."

And so, they continued to turn matchsticks into needles to the annoyance of everyone who could already do so easily.

Herbology was slowly getting more interesting because instead of just looking at plants they actually started working with them. And working in this case meant weeding them, which reminded Harry a little too much of hot summer days spend without water. While Harry's experience with plants meant that he was among the top of his class in Herbology he quickly realized that it was nothing that sparked his interest.

In Defence against the Dark Arts on the other hand they had just started learning spells. And while most of them were still confused about why the professor had told them, never to use Flippendo against any living thing lest they may face expulsion, most students were happy to have an easy spell that while tiering did not take them weeks to learn or weeks to practise. The only one to still have any problems with the spell turned out to be Neville, to the amusement of Draco and the other Slytherins of course.

In Potions the professor continued to bully Harry which brought him the empathy of most of his peers. While the potions got harder, the only reason Harry and Hermione ever failed to produce an at least expectable potion was when Malfoy got bored of sabotaging Neville's potion and turned to theirs instead.

Astrology and History of magic remained the two most boring classes they had, and while professor Sinistra at least tried defending her subject by saying that "there are many fields of magic that required knowledge about stars and constellations" Binns did not even pretend to care whether his students liked his class or not. In fact, most of them were doubting whether he had even heard the question of "when would we ever need to know any of this".

While the last few flying classes were fun they were also over rather quickly.  
Harry was no exceptional flyer, which seemed to sadden Madame Hooch for some reason, but unlike Hermione he wasn't terrible at it either.

If not for Halloween Harry would not even have noticed that it had already been two months at Hogwarts. The frequency of his nightmares had been extremely low and while he had asked one of the Weasley twins to cast a silencing ward around his bed, supposedly because of Ron's snoring, he was even thinking about not asking them again the next months.

It was this thought that reminded him of the letter he had promised to send Ginny Weasley. He decided that he would sit down and write the letter after the Halloween feast, he would have done it right then, but he was too worried about the upcoming charms class. Because today would be the day they were finally allowed to try on the levitation charm, which they had been studying for almost two months now.

They were put into groups of two and Harry and Neville were among the ones who got paired up with the Hufflepuffs. He would work together with a girl called Sally-Anne Perks while Neville got paired up with Hanna Abbott. The professor sadly made the fatal error of pairing up Ron and Hermione, which in Harry's opinion was possibly the worst thing he could have done.

Hermione was of course the first one to manage the spell, which as Harry knew was because she had been practising the spell well before they were supposed to do so, which professor McGonagall had not been happy about if one considered how she had talked about it in class.

"Wingardium Leviosa" Harry said once again. And finally, the feather started moving upwards.  
The class was already almost over, but professor Flitwick obviously still considered it a great success to be able to cast the spell at all within the first two hours of actively practising it and rewarded Harry with a point.  
"How did you do that" Sally asked with a frustrated little smile on her face. Her feather had not moved a bit in the last one and a half hours, no matter how perfect her pronunciation or her wand movement.  
"I honestly don't even know." Harry answered truthfully.  
"I'm so looking forward to when we will be able to quick cast this spell, needing almost nine minutes to float a feather is just way to frustrating. You should ask Hermione for help, she was already able to quick cast this stupid spell about a week ago."  
"Really," she asked with obvious surprise in her voice "but we were not supposed to start practising this before today."  
"Yeah, well it's not like Hermione would let anyone forbid her from starting early when it comes to her grades. I think she said something about wanting to start planning for the exams before winter break or something like that."  
"Honestly? How do you even put up with her? I heard everyone saying that she can barely hold a conversation for more than half a minute before she either shuts off or starts a lecture." Sally said while putting her stuff into her bookbag, but it was clear that there was no mean intention behind her words.  
"True I guess." He answered with a lopsided grin, but before he could continue explaining that she just needed some time to warm up to people he saw Hermione storm off, crying.

Harry had felt terrible when Hermione did not appear to Herbology and Sally-Anne looked like she felt even worse than him, that was until they heard that Hermione had not even been upset about them, but that Ron had said something hurtful about her.  
According to Lavender Brown it had been something along the lines of "No wonder the only person to even look at her is also the one Gryffindor to be on friendly terms with Malfoy."  
While Ron was correct on calling him on friendly terms with Malfoy, this statement made Harry almost angry enough to start a fight in the middle of the greenhouse.

When Hermione did not appear at dinner Harry was getting really worried. He was about to go search for her when professor Quirrell stormed into the great hall announcing that, a troll had managed to get into the castle, and fainting immediately afterwards.

When Harry had just left the great hall, he heard Neville and Ron shouting his name.  
"I'm searching for Hermione" he shouted over to them before taking off.  
Because of Harrys bad physic they caught up with him after less than two minutes.

"Where are we even going" Neville cried out when he would not stop.  
"I have to warn Hermione."  
"Do you even know where she is?"  
At this Harry paused for a second. Then he pointed in a direction with an uncertain frown on his face.  
"I heard someone say she was in the girl's bathroom on the first floor" Ron quipped in.  
"What are we waiting for then." Harry asked and started running in the almost exact direction he had been pointing at.

When they reached the first floor they could hear a mix panicked screams and wailing from the bathroom they were looking for.  
Ron reached the floor first, opened it, looked inside, turned grey, and closed the door again.  
"What." Harry shouted at him, but Ron looked like the thing he wanted to do most right now was running away.

After a few seconds of Harry glaring at him, Ron gulped turned back towards the door and opened it again.  
In the bathroom stood a at least seven feet big mountain troll.  
When Harry saw it he remembered something professor Quirrell had mentioned. "Most dark creatures have a fear inducing aura, that makes fighting them incredibly difficult even if you know how to do so", granted Quirrell had needed about two minutes for that sentence, but Harry now understood perfectly well what the man had meant.

"The two of you distract him, while I get Hermione" he told Neville and Ron.  
While Neville looked like he was about to puke, he nodded and started throwing debris, which was littering the floor, at the troll.

The troll that was just about to smash his wooden club into Hermione, who's screams had long died on her lips, but then turned around to see Neville throwing pebbles at him.  
Ron had just started running towards a smashed cabin to blast its broken door into the troll using Flippendo.

By the time Harry had managed to reach Hermione, Ron had already blasted the troll with the door, which seemed to only enrage it more.  
Harry noticed in passing that the wailing they all had heard wasn't coming from Hermione, but one of the destroyed loos instead.  
Hermione had been all but in shock, but once Harry reached for her and told her to run if she wanted to live she instead looked like she had not a fear in the world. Rather than running like Harry had advised her to, she pulled out her wand, pointed it at one of the former stone sinks.

"Wingardium Leviosa"

The big piece of debris that had formally been a sink slowly started moving into the air. It hovered over the troll's head for a second before crashing down into it.  
The troll was not amused.

Harry looked in shock at the Troll, then to Hermione who had managed to knock herself out with the same spell that had already knocked her out once before.  
The troll which did not understand where the sink had come from turned to the closest target once again, Neville, who was currently lying on the ground, because a piece of the sink that had just crashed into the troll had hit him.

Neville was about to die. He knew it, but was still unable to do anything about it. He would have tried to use Flippendo in the hope that the troll would fall over, but Neville was still the one person in class who was unable to quick cast that spell.  
He was about to close his eyes for the last time, when he saw Harry pick up a long wooden splinter from the ground before charging the troll. Wand in one hand, splinter in the other he jumped on the trolls back before ramming the splinter up its nose.  
The troll cried out, but otherwise ignored both the piece of wood and the wizard on his back, while closing the distance between itself and Neville.

"Flippendo" Harry cried out while pointing his wand at the splinter which made it shoot up further into the nose of the troll. The troll stumbled and fell. Right at Neville.

At this moment professors Snape, McGonagall and Quirrell came into the room.  
Quirrell shot a Flippendo at Neville, before anyone else could do anything. He hit the wall, which was made of wool for some reason.

"What is going on here." Shrieked professor McGonagall who had her wand in hand.  
Instead of starting to lecture her student's professor McGonagall turned to Quirrell.  
"And what were you thinking, the boy could have died, had he hit the wall like that. And could you please stop wailing, Mrs. Warren? It's not like you were in any danger."  
"H-he w-would h-have also d-died had I done n-nothing" Quirrell countered.  
"And you had no other spell that could have gotten him to safety that would not have killed him too?" She asked in an exasperate voice.

Five minutes and ten points to Gryffindor later they all, expect professors Snape and Quirrell, arrived in the hospital wing.

To Ginny Weasley,

Hi, Harry here. Sorry for not writing you earlier, but I was busy with school stuff.  
Hogwarts is awesome, even if it is a lot more dangerous than I would have expected.  
We, that is Hermione, Ron, Neville and me, where attacked by a mountain troll today.

Don't worry, no one was hurt… much. Neville was hit with some shrapnel and Ron strained his left foot while jumping out of the way, but other than that everyone was fine.

Other than that Hogwarts has been great. We sleep in dorms with very comfy beds. We get to eat great meals. And most importantly we get to learn magic.

I managed to levitate a feather today in class and blasted a piece of wood into a troll's nose with the pushing curse this evening. I think this was the best Halloween I ever had.

I'm not sure what tomorrow will be like, since it's the day Neville beat You-know-who and all that. I should probably thank him for offing the guy who killed my parents, even if I would have preferred it if he had done so one day earlier.

Whatever, while I don't like my aunt and uncle they are still family, right?

I'm kind of sleepy since I drank that potion madam Pomfrey gave me, that woman really is overprotective, I wasn't even hurt, and she still wanted to keep me in the hospital wing for observation, only because I jumped on the back of a troll.

Anyway, I'm tired and going to bed now, if you have any questions ask me in your letter, I will ask Hedwig to stay at your place, so you can just give her your letter instead of having to send another owl all the way to Scotland.

-Harry

* * *

AN

* * *

Hey there, sorry this took so long. I could make excuses for why it did take so long and some of them would be quite good, but the last three weeks or so are entirely on me, so I won't even try to talk myself out of it.

There is a little joke hidden in this chapter but I'm not sure if I should point it out or not ^^

Anyway, I hope you all have a wonderful week.


	6. Letters

**Letters**

* * *

To Harry Potter,

Hi, it was nice getting your letter, I had already thought that you had forgotten about it.

I going to ask you whether you were joking about the troll, but mum got a letter from Hogwarts about it.

I know of course who Neville is and Ron wrote a letter to mum in which he noted that he had become friends with him. Can you believe that you are actually in the same class as the boy-boy-who-lived? Isn´t that amazing. I really hope to meet him in person.  
I think Ron also mentioned this Hermione, but only in like one sentence and I don´t think he likes her very much. Could you tell me something about her?

You must´ve not had the greatest of Halloweens if fighting a troll still makes the top spot. Either that or you are an adrenaline junkie I guess, hehe. Sorry that came on meaner than it was meant.

How are your classmates in general? Ron is going on about how awful all the Slytherins are.

I´m sorry about your parents, I didn´t know. Guess that makes being in the same house with Neville even more exciting for you.

Hedwig is beautiful by the way. I wish I could get an owl, but don´t you dare pulling one of those these things are free on me or my mother again. I have asked Mr. Blotts and there have not been any free books at the store for almost five months.

Thanks for the books again anyway, they have been very interesting, but there is lots of stuff in there that I don´t really get yet.  
How does this quick casting and this spell-changing-Ritual work exactly?

Sincerely  
Ginny

* * *

To Ginny Weasley,

Yeah, I´m really sorry it took so long until the first letter. Since Hedwig seems to be happy to have something to do I´ll make it up to you by sending you the next letters fast. 😊

Hermione Granger is a friend of mine, we met on the train and she has saved me from failing my homework at least a dozen times already. She is a little (reads: very) socially awkward and a bit of an overachiever. She managed to knock herself out with a spell she was able to quick cast already when we had just started learning the spell.

I guess I skip ahead and answer this right away while I´m on the topic already.  
As you probably know you are only able to cast a certain number of spells quickly. At the start of the year you get a book from a mysterious room in which your quick-cast list is. You can quick cast every spell you have on that list by saying it´s basic formula and using the correct wand movement. It is a little more tiering than slow casting the spell, but it takes like no time if you compare it with slow casting. To get a spell on that list you have to be able to slow cast it without much problem. Then you do the spell-changing-Ritual which is basically like casting the spell even slower and with more care and without it´s effect, instead of casting the spell this puts the spell on your quick-cast-list. It´s all very tiering and the teachers had to explain it at least half a dozen times until anyone in class who was not named Hermione understood what they meant to tell us. Now that I think about it, shouldn´t you already know this from your parents or brothers?

As for Neville, he is a nice guy, but I´m not sure what all the hype is about, he is a bit goofy and very clumsy, but I overall like him. The only problem is that while he did off the moron who killed my parents I can´t help but think how much better my life would be had he done so a day earlier, which makes it kind of awkward to talk to him. Also, I know that he kind of lost his parents too at that day, so it would feel very untactful talking about it with him.

Let´s see, what´s next. Yeah, my Halloweens are for some reason always the worst day of the year for me, and not only because it´s the day my parents died. By now I think it might actually be a curse or something like that.

On the topic of classmates, I´m overall pretty happy to say that most of them are very friendly. There are a few mean people in Hogwarts, but no one who is worth of any real notice so far. The reason your brother thinks that all Slytherins are evil is that he hates Draco Malfoy. While Malfoy is an idiot it is not like he is really evil or anything like that. Some of the Slytherins are actually not that bad, and while I wouldn´t call any of them a friend yet I wouldn´t rule out the possibility just yet. Blaise Zabini helped me in our second Flying lesson, but since we only share one other class and I won´t partner up with anyone but Hermione in potions anytime soon we haven´t talked in like a month or so.

Speaking of flying, your brother has for some reason made it into the Quidditch team and has been lording it over us for the last two hours since it has been announced that professor McGonagall got a permission for him to play even though he is still in first year.

I don´t get what all the fuss is about with Quidditch. The first game is next week so I will see it for myself I guess. Then again Seamus Finigan told me something about Hogwarts still playing by the old rules of Quidditch which for some reason means that a game could be over in minutes or take hours. I´ll have to ask Hermione what that is all about at some point. While she hates flying with a passion she is sure to know the rules of Quidditch, considering how many Quidditch books she read in her panic before the first Flying lesson. :P

Anyway I´ll be off, or I´ll be too late for dinner.

Looking forward to your next letter.

Harry

* * *

To Harry,

Hermione sounds nice. I´d guess my brother is as always jealous or something and that is the reason he dislikes her. Maybe being on the team will finally cure him from that. He would always get upset if I got anything he didn´t, the book for example put him into a right fit for a day or two, until he realized that he would go to Hogwarts in less than a month.

Thanks for explaining the quick cast thing. While I´m not sure I get how this stuff works yet I at least understand the concept now. I think my parents tried to explain it to me a few times when I was younger, but since I was like six or seven at that time they decided that it would be easier to just answer with "you´ll learn that at Hogwarts" ever since. Also, it´s not like I asked them often. I kind of just excepted that they sometimes could do stuff with magic and at other times wouldn´t bother to use a spell.

I can explain the differences between old school quidditch and the "new" rules for you.  
In the past a game would end when the seeker caught the snitch, but while doing so is still a pretty hard thing to do, the brooms got faster and increasing the speed of the snitch along side them would have become stupid at some point. Instead they made it, so the snitch would be a lot better at changing directions then the brooms, so that it would still be a hard thing to do and also decided that a game would have new rules on how to end. There now is a set time limit of two hours for a game and a snitch only gives you fifty points. The game also ends when one team catches the snitch for the third time or if one team reaches five hundred points or more. The only other significant change is that the bulgers now have a spell on them so that they don´t hurt people any longer, but instead just knock them aside, slow them and make them lose the Quaffle if they had it.  
This changed the game so that seekers would sometimes decide to stop searching for the snitch and instead help their team to score for a while and made it so that their brooms went from being purely for speed to some degree of manoeuvrability. It also decreased the number of deaths to almost zero.

I don´t really know why Hogwarts still holds onto the old rules, but since school children can usually not afford top of the line brooms it´s kind of ok I guess.

I hope you will come around to the game, because it is a lot of fun, both to play it and to watch it.

Was there anything else interesting so far?

Ginny

* * *

To Ginny,

You were right, Quidditch is amazing, even if we lost. Ron is apparently really good at catching the snitch, but not to great in searching for it.

We sat with Hagrid the groundkeeper and he had some binoculars with him, and I have to say that those make the game so much more interesting to watch.

I could imagine that the game would be way more fun with the new rules, because like it is it kind of feels like the seeker is the either the only important player (along with the beaters I guess) or he doesn´t matter at all.

Hagrid invited us (Neville, Ron, Hermione and me) to tea after the game and it was delicious.  
Though I must advise against his rock cakes.

As for your last question, the headmaster told the school about a forbidden corridor of certain death and in it is according to Hermione a Cerberus that guards a trap door. Ron is hellbent on finding out what that is all about and is drawing Neville into this craziness. I thought not much of it, but for some reason Hagrid let slip that what the Cerberus is protecting is only important to the headmaster and some Nicolas Flamel chap. I really wish he had not said that, because now Hermione has a mystery to solve and is helping Ron with this idiocy, and with her help, Ron and Neville might have a real chance to get to the bottom of this.

While Ron and Hermione will likely never be close they are at least on friendly terms since Halloween. And since she is helping him with his stupid death wish he has been pretty nice to her lately. I wonder how long that will hold, but I will enjoy the peace while it lasts.

Personally I´m more interested in the room in the restricted room in the library, but I have no idea how to get in there. Fred and George said something about never having managed to get in there since that first time in first year, but didn´t say much beyond that. Did they ever mention anything about it at home?

Anyway, Ron told me that you will be gone to Romania or something over the break. Of course, his story was more about how unfair it was that you would be able to visit Charlie which is something he had always dreamed about.

Anyway, I guess that means that this will be my last letter to you this year. I really enjoy writing these more than I had thought. I hope you will have a merry Christmas, even if you may not get a white Christmas. They way it has been snowing here, we will most definitely get one.

Harry

* * *

To Harry,

Thanks, I wish you a merry Christmas as well.

I really hope my brother doesn´t get himself killed in his first year, or mum and dad may decide not to let me go next year.

Fred and George never mentioned the room as far as I know, but if the room is open once a year, isn´t that a way to get in?

I hope you´ll have a nice break

Ginny

* * *

AN

* * *

Sorry this is so late. Hope you had some fun. Please review.


	7. Bribes

**Presents**

* * *

Harry´s life had never been better. He had a bed at night, didn´t have to steal food, learnt how to do magic and even had friends. Granted doing magic was a lot more complicated then he had imagined and the same could be said about having friends, but in the end, it couldn´t get much better. That was until the Christmas break began. Hermione had left Hogwarts over the Christmas break because she apperantly missed her parents enough to let the mystery of Nicolas Flamel be for the break, and Neville had some important Christmas tradition to attend to, but Ron and his brothers would stay because their parents decided to finally visit their son Charlie in Romania.

So, it came that Harry was woken up early on Christmas morning by Ron, which was in itself a paradox. But what confused him even more was what he found next. He had gotten presents. "What did you expect? A lump of coal?" asked Ron when he noticed Harrys face.

Harry did not respond.

"Is everything alright?"

Harry did not move a muscle.

When Ron walked over to shake him to see if he was ok, Harry jumped out of bed, pushed Ron aside and ran to the bathroom. With a quick "I think we are sick" he shut the door and locked it behind him.

He was still slightly in shock after he had cleaned his face.

 _ **Could you please stop having a panic attack?  
**_ _Do you even realize what this means?  
_ _ **Of course I do, so?  
**_ _That means we are loved.  
_ _ **What? Are you stupid now?  
**_ _But uncle and aunt always bought Dudley stuff.  
_ _ **So…  
**_ _Which is how they showed him that they loved him.  
_ _ **What. No, they bribed him, so he would behave when Marge came to visit.  
Do you remember when we helped that red haired girl.  
**_ _Ginny?  
_ _ **Yes yes, whatever she was called, the one you write your stupid letters to in which you reveal way too much information.  
**_ _But you agreed that doing so was the right course of action.  
_ _ **I did, but only because we were intoxicated at the time we wrote the first letter and you refused to rewrite it later. Being open in one letter and not the second would have been suspicious and getting better connection to the Weasley family might be worth the work, but you were not supposed to enjoy revealing our stuff to her and you were not supposed to basically tell her our plans.  
**_ _Ohh please, you like her too and you know that. You could have easily prevented me form telling her about the "plan" as you like to call it.  
_ _ **What is that even supposed to mean I like her? I don´t even understand the concept of liking someone. And I´m way ahead of you, if the plan fails she is an important part of the backup plan.  
**_ _Sure whatever. I don´t really get that liking thing either, but I know I like her, and so do you.  
_ _ **Arghh, could you please just look at the bribes, so we will see, who thinks us important enough to bribe and, so we see what those people think our price is? We already spend way too much time in here, and while your "we are sick" excuse was pretty good quick thinking, that does not really count since you really pucked and were dump enough to say we instead of I.**_

Harry blushed slightly before stopping to stare at his reflection in the mirror and walking into the dorm.  
"Do you feel better" Ron asked when Harry came out of the bathroom. He had been in there for almost three quarters of an hour and Ron was starving already. He had considered asking professor McGonagall or his brothers for help, but to get to the professor and back would have taken like fifteen minutes or so and asking F&G for help was never a good idea. While Percy would have been an option to ask Ron never felt comfortable asking him, because like with Hermione it always turned into a lecture, but unlike with Hermione´s lectures that at least sometimes were helpful Percy´s lectures always ended up being stuff he kind of already knew.

While he would have liked to see Harry´s presents he was way to hungry to wait any longer, so once Harry had assured him that he was alright he left to get breakfast.  
Consequently he was very surprise when Harry got down to dinner about half an hour later, wearing a Weasley Christmas sweater, a red scarf and playing with some kind of muggle coin.

"Since when," "is little Harry" "a Weasley" said the twins in a surprised back and forth.  
"Yeah, what is up with that Harry" Ron asked the approaching Harry.  
"Dunno, got this with a letter that said, 'for the help at Flourish and Blotts and saving Ron´s life', I don´t even know what your mum means with the last part, it´s not like I defeated the troll alone."  
Ron had started turning an ugly shade of red when he heard the part about having been saved, but Harry had placated him quite effectively. It was always amazing to Fred and George how predictable their little brother truly was.  
"And who," "is that" "scarf from?" "Does someone have a" "Girlfriend" the last word had been said in unison and they were really looking forward to his reaction, but to their surprise he first turned slightly pale and then stopped moving all together for about three seconds.

When he answered it was not what they would have expected however.  
"Well, I don´t know if I would call Ginny my Girlfriend just yet" he said with an amused expression as he watched Fred and George pale and Ron sputter.  
He grinned before continuing, "we have been writing letters for a while, since I helped her in Flourish and Blotts and apparently she decided to send me a gift. It´s kind of awkward since I haven't send her a gift, yet. Honestly my family isn´t that much into the whole present thing, so the only gift I send out was a book for Hermione."

The twins looked at each other before deciding to get back at Harry for the shock he had just given them.  
"So," "little Harry" "is courting two women" "at the same time, now" "is he?"  
But Harry one up them once again by saying "Well, I guess if you want to put it like that…" with a face so innocent that they had almost bought it.  
Then Fred started laughing and everyone else joint in, including about three quarters of the dinner table, that had been listening in on their conversation the whole time.

After the laughter had died down Fred and George took Harry to the side and told him he could just send a gift to "the Burrow" and label it as a Christmas present, because their family would need some time to get back to England and no one would know whether the present was there before, or after Christmas, well except for about everyone currently in Hogwarts that is.

When Harry joint Ron at the dinner table, Ron finally asked the question that really interested him. "What is that coin?"  
"Oh, it´s just some muggle money."  
"But it is valuable, isn´t it?"  
"I guess you could say that" Harry said with a surprisingly bitter laugh. "But you can´t exactly buy much for it."  
"Huh, I don´t get it."  
"Don´t worry, I don´t really get it myself."  
Ron was confused, why did so many people insist on speaking in riddles? Were they trying to mock him? But then his confusion lifted as he saw that the dessert had just been served.

That night Harry went to bed early, saying that the ill feeling of the morning had returned.  
He had to physically hold himself back from applauding himself when, Ron started snoring about half an hour later, because he had no reason to stay awake with only his brothers as company. He got up, dressed himself and pulled one of his presents out of his trunk.

Half an hour later he reached the library. He went over to the door to the restricted section and took a look at it. It was locked of course, but he hadn´t spent all that time with Hermione for nothing. He wasn´t quite able to quick cast the Alohomora yet, but after about six minutes the unlocking charm did what it was supposed to do.

 _ **Told you this would work.**_ _  
Yes yes, but you know as well as I do, that it won´t be enough to get into that room._

He reached the room, he had been in only once. The spellbook room.

 _What now, huh. What is your genius plan to get into this stupid room? Because so far, your plans never got past getting here, and without this wonderful cloak we would have already been discovered twice.  
_ _ **Yes, we really should be happy for that. I don´t get, why who ever gave it to us made the bribe so inefficient by saying that it already belonged to you, because it was your fathers cloak, but maybe he just wants to think that he is an honest person or something stupid like that.  
**_ _If it was really to bribe us, why did he not say who he was?  
_ _ **I´m still working on that, ok. Could you please go back to the task at hand pleas, or would you prefer for me to do so?  
**_ _And what am I supposed to do, exactly?  
_ _ **I don´t know, look around the room, inspect the door, why do I always have to do all the thinking?  
**_ _Because it is your stupid plan, and because I still basically know nothing about how magic works?_

Harry walked around the room once, but the only unusual thing about the room was that it looked oddly out of place amidst all the shelfs. Also having a room inside the centre of another room made it look like a weirdly thick pillar.

When Harry approached the door, he noticed that it had a key hole, but beyond that it was a simple door like most others in Hogwarts.

 _Can we go now? We need some kind of key, and we have no idea were that is supposed to be or how to get it.  
_ _ **Could you please stop being so annoying? It was your idea to get into this room again.  
**_ _It was something I thought twice, that does not really make it my idea. Sure, it felt weird in there, and I would have liked to be in there for a while longer, but ever since the twins told us that they never managed to sneak in there I have long lost interest in it.  
_ _ **At least try to behave like the house you were sorted into for once, will you.**_

That had not been the smartest thing to say however as Harry promptly drew his wand and pointed it at the door, but before he could even attempt a spell the entire library became alive and started shouting. It was like every book had grown a face and started screaming and indeed some of them really had done so.

Harry put his wand away before staring to sprint out of the library, but he could hear Filch following him. He wasn´t sure how Filch managed to track him, but the how was not what was the most important thing right now.

He was getting frustrated. He had been working on this since before the school year started and had not expected to still be working on it by Christmas. He had long since begun doubting how clever of a plan it really had been to bring a powerful dark artefact into a school full of children. Even worse, it had damaged the wards and it would take up to three years for them to get back to their full power. He was quite angry with himself for not at least bringing the damn thing in after the first day at school, because the wards had detected something very dark entering the school at that day. Had he known that the ward may have been able to detect it he would not have bothered to bring in this stupid thing but instead allowed the wards to erase the problem altogether. But it was too late to mourn past failures. It was the day of Christmas and he really wanted to be at the feast the next day, but working without rest had never gotten him anywhere. He left the room and trusted that the wards would be more than enough to deny anyone entrance who would not at least be a learnt curse breaker. So, he made his way down to the kitchen to get a cuppa, before he would return back to his work.

He heard to alarm that someone had broken into the restricted section, but was confident that professor Snape and Filch would be well able to handle the problem by themselves.  
After he finished another two cups of hot chocolate, before returning to his work.

When he saw that the door was open he berated himself for a moment before scolding himself for worrying so much, the ward did not rely on the door.  
He pulled out his wand and got back to work.

Harry had been very thankful for the slightly opened door that had saved him from professor Snape and Filch, but when his cloak had started acting weird while he was passing through the door he had become worried for a moment. His cloak that was usually way too big for him, started behaving like a paper bag that got all the air sucked out of it. It was skin tight when he finally managed to fully enter the room without touching the door. When he saw the mirror, his previous panic was almost instantly forgotten. He looked into it and was transfixed by what he saw.

There he was, both of them, standing amidst their friends and classmates. No one seemed to care. They were all just happy that he was there with them.

It took him almost five minutes, but then.

 _ **Something is wrong.  
**_ _I know.  
_ _ **Do you know what it is?  
**_ _Yes, but it doesn´t matter.  
_ _ **Good, I was worried for a moment.  
**_ _Don´t worry, we´ll enjoy this as long as possible.  
_ _ **Do you believe this is possible?  
**_ _I would love to say that I do, but you know as well as I that this is just a nice dream. What I find more fascinating is that it seems to affect you at all.  
_ _ **What? No, I could go away from here anytime I wanted.  
**_ _Really? Because I´m not sure I could.  
_ _ **Hah, that is while your feelings make you weak.  
**_ _Prove it. For all your talk about not understanding feelings you have a surprisingly poor opinion of them._

But Harry stayed.

 _ **Fine, you try it.**_

But Harry stayed.

 _This is a problem.  
_ _ **Oh, really, how did you arrive at that conclusion, sherlock.  
**_ _Then again, it is so nice to imagine this could become true.  
_ _ **Your right, sorry for being so mean.**_

It took another five minutes and a creaking door to free him from his stupor.  
With all their will power they looked at the door. And there not more than 3 feet away was Albus Dumbledore, staring at him, drawing his wand and pointing at him. He ducked and got out of the was as Dumbledore shot a yellow stream of spells at the mirror. He was not sure. If Dumbledore had noticed him or not, for he was staring with tears in his eyes at the mirror while constantly casting spells without saying a single word. He had to endure a constant back and forth of:  
 _We could watch the mirror from the side._ _ **No, we**_ _can´t._ _ **  
Just a few moments.**_ _ **No, we**_ _won´t._

Before Dumbledore finally stop with whatever he was doing and opened the door to leave.

When he was finally out of the room, he almost ran, but recognized just in time that Dumbledore could hear him if he did so. And it was a good thing too, because just as he was about to leave, he saw the headmaster pull out a strange green key that reminded him of why had even left his bed tonight.  
He grabbed his coin and held it tight. He had been right, it was worth quite a bit. The feelings attached to it could probably sustain him for a week straight if needed and if nothing else, it would always remind him of what he was.  
 _ **A**_ _Monster_.

* * *

AN

* * *

In case anyone wonders what the: _ **"Do you remember when we helped that red haired girl."**_ part was supposed to be about, he wanted to point out that they kind of bribed Ginny so they would be able to get some connections, but then got side tracked by the whole letter business. _ **  
**_

As an after thought, the teasing in this chapter does not mean that this will be a Ginny/Harry fic. It's just teasing. I won't say that they won't end up togther, because quite frankly I don't know yet.

Just got an review on this story. I don't really know how I can sent an answer to that person so I decided to make an exception for my first offical review and try to answer the question asked here. The question was if the spellbooks they use work like the "D&D spellbook" or like the "FFXI Scholar's grimoire", to this I must sadly answer that I have no idea since I have only very little experience with D&D and have only ever played FFX. I hope the chapter called "letters" answered how the spellbooks work, but if not please tell me and I will either exlain them in an AN or will try to fit in another explanation for them into a chapter. (I already have an idea on where to fit the explanation in if it is needed, just in case. Would be around chapter 18 or so, can't quite say yet.)

Thanks again to Fast Frank for my first offical review :)


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